RAID is not backup

Stumbled upon this article regarding a lawsuit filed against Promise Technology. It seems that online backup firm Carbonite was using Promise gear to store their data (mistake number one). They were relying strictly on RAID to keep the data safe (mistake number two). An alleged firmware bug caused the arrays to get trashed. So customers lost data, and Carbonite is suing Promise.

Just a good reminder that RAID Is Not Backup.

Whaa? Cisco acquires Pure Digital

I was rather surprised to learn that Cisco has acquired Pure Digital, creators of the Flip Video line of cameras. These cameras have been hugely successful, but it’s surprising to see Cisco getting into that field.

The $590 million dollar purchase price is also pretty surprising. Obviously Cisco thinks there’s a lot more value to be found in the Flip line. I’ve been more inclined to consider them a nice transition product on our way to properly video enabled cell phones.

Microsoft Embracing H.264

Was that a pig that just went by my window?



Ben Waggoner from Microsoft made a post on the quicktime-users mailing list yesterday announcing that Silverlight 3 (currently in beta) will support H.264. This extremely exciting, as previously Silverlight was Windows Media only.

Take a look at this post from Ben, detailing some of the media-related changes. This means it’ll now be possible to deliver the exact same file in Flash, Silverlight and a podcast.